At 11.00 this morning, I participated in a discussion on Press TV (Iran) of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s armed rebellion and Vladimir Putin’s address to the nation which it elicited.
http://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/124778
My fellow panelist who was introduced as Press TV’s correspondent in Moscow delivered some extravagant statements on how the Russian government has been an unmitigated disaster and why the whole nation supports Yevgeny Prigozhin in his bid to overthrow the regime.Those statements seem to have been unexpected by our hosts in Teheran. I assume they were not welcome there since for most of the rest of the 27 minutes on air, I was invited to talk and to talk, which I did. And so I had the opportunity to put on air the thoughts I had prepared in advance with respect to the importance of the Wagner Group relative to the regular Russian armed forces and the nature of its operation in Bakhmut compared to what the Russian armed forces are now doing across the Donbas in repelling the Ukrainian counter-offensive. What I said on those matters stands by itself and needs no further remarks here. But my words on the mutiny in 1917 to which Putin alluded in his speech do merit some further consideration which I will provide below.
Before doing that, I am obliged to say that when we went on air there was very little information in the media on how Prigozhin’s rebellion was proceeding. The Russian state channels fleshed out slightly Putin’s remark that the situation in Rostov-on-Don was tense. We were told that the rebels had surrounded the military command buildings in the city, which, all by itself was a signal that the rebellion was very serious, since Rostov is a major staging area and command center for the war in Ukraine. The 2.00 pm feature News program on Russia’s Channel One added almost no fresh reports, though there was mention of Prigozhin forces having moved up the Don valley to Voronezh , i.e. about 530 km from Moscow.Meanwhile in the afternoon Western media were putting out reports on how the White House was closely following developments in Russia, on how Putin had hurriedly been phoning fellow leaders among the former Soviet republics in Central Asia and had called Erdogan in Turkey. These calls were interpreted as a sign of desperation if not panic on the part of the Russian leader. It was precisely this picture of Putin ‘on the ropes’ that several fellow panelists presented when I went on air again in a broader discussion of the armed rebellion hosted by Republic TV of India at 4.30 pm Brussels time.
By 8.00 pm (Moscow), Russia’s Channel One opened with the Putin speech and then allocated maybe 20 minutes to brief statements from Duma party leaders and from governors across Russia declaring their loyalty to Vladimir Putin and their condemnation of the rebellion. The channel also broadcast extensive reports from Rostov, where Prigozhin’s troops remained in control of the military command centers, and from cities further up the Don which his rebel troops had passed around on the march north towards Moscow. In all of these locations, life was said to be proceeding normally, as confirmed by video images and interviews with people on the streets. . On the major interregional highway connecting the South to Moscow, the M4, the Vesti reporters spoke to truckers who have been sidelined in rest stops along the way while the highway is closed to traffic for security reasons. None was particularly bothered by this disturbance of their work schedules. War correspondents based in the Donbas along the line of confrontation interviewed soldiers to hear their affirmations of confidence in the Supreme Military Commander and their dedication to defeating the Ukrainian Nazi forces.Of greater significance, the 8.00 pm Russian news ended on a very encouraging note: they relayed the information just received from the office of Belarus President Lukashenko that he has been in negotiations with Prigozhin and they reached agreement on a de-escalation of the conflict to ensure that no blood would be shed in internecine fighting on Russian soil. What that deal may entail perhaps will be made public tomorrow.
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As mentioned at the outset, I wish to add to my recorded comments on the 1917 mutiny which Putin said had led to Civil War, to great loss of Russian territory and to the forced break-up of the country with the connivance of outside powers. I identified this as the September mutiny of General Kornilov who had not long before been appointed chief commander by Alexander Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government. Kornilov rebelled against the Socialist dominated government to get a free hand to restore discipline in the armed forces and so to make a further war effort possible. He was then politically outmaneuvered and his troops melted away. The cause of conservatives melted away with him and a few weeks later the Bolsheviks staged their coup, or Revolution if you will, which led to the Civil War.
However, on reflection, I think Putin probably was thinking of the earlier ‘palace coup’ that year, known generally as the February Revolution, during which the Liberals and Conservative members of the parliament (Duma), in cahoots with British intelligence and diplomacy, and with top generals compelled Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. That left the country without constitutional rule and put it on the slippery path to the October Revolution.
Nonetheless, I do not find Putin’s references to 1917 to be suitably relevant to the present situation. In his speech, he also made mention of Russia’s 1,000 year history and I think we have to go back further in time to find a similar act of treachery in wartime to match Prigozhin’s. And what comes to mind is the defection to the enemy in 1708 in the midst of Russia’s Northern War with Sweden of a certain Ivan Mazepa, who was Hetman of the Zaporozhie Cossacks on the Left (Eastern) bank of the Dniepr. The story is well and briefly told in Wikipedia. For those who want to season the story with passion, torture and murder, while enjoying rousing music, I recommend listening to Tchaikowsky’s opera by the same name.
If you are wondering what Zaporozhie has to do with a fight against the Swedes, you must know that the battle of Poltava (also Ukraine today) in 1709 between these two empires was of decisive importance for the eventual outcome of their twenty years war.
Like Prigozhin, Mazepa was in charge of what we would today call an independent or mercenary army. Like Prigozhin, Mazepa was extraordinarily wealthy, ambitious and proud. And like Prigozhin, he feared imminent demotion of his status as military leader: his overlord, Peter the Great, was preparing reforms to modernize the Russian armed forces and render them more effective by centralization, meaning at the expense of the freebooters.
By the way, Mazepa’s rebellion did not end well for him nor did it end well for the 3,000 or so Cossacks who stayed with him to the end.
In sum, there is a lot in the 1,000 years of Russian state history that they seem to overlook on Capitol Hill.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Gilbert Doctorow 
If one is seeking a parallel for Prigozhin’s little munity, I would have thought that the Coup d’État d’Alger as it is called in April 1961 might be a better example – when some retired officers and others rebelled against the policies of De Gaulle during the Algerian war
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I saw those pictures as well. I think they reflect support for Wagner, in general, but not for a coup attempt. I would not be surprised if most of those people didn’t realize, at the time, that Prigozhin was attempting a coup.
However, it’s worth noting that the lack of support I mentioned was from the government, MSM, army, etc. Official groups. The general masses will always have their own views.
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by any definition of the word, it was never a coup attempt, that is what the western press fondly liked (hoped) to believe it was – it was in fact a mutiny, which is normally defined as ‘an open rebellion against the proper authorities especially by soldiers’.
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I was thinking of the deserting soldiers coming back home with their rifles from the WWI front, eventually turning against the government which refused to or could not withdraw Russia from a war that was not theirs.
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My thinking is that Putin and Prigozhin is acting together on this to give Putin the opportunity to evaluate the loyalty of people in his government and among military leaders.
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